SKOL from the Sofa
2025 Week 17 – Lions at Vikings

You hear a lot about miracles at this time of year, and the Vikings’ Christmas Day victory over the Lions was pretty close to it. An anonymous offensive display saved by a couple of plays and possibly the best defensive performance by anyone this year, and Charles Wheeler is absolutely giddy to talk about it as he brings you this week’s SKOL from the Sofa.

Ahahahahahahahaha…

Come on. Come ON. We didn’t, did we? But we did! We totally did! The Minnesota Vikings knocked the Detroit Lions out of the playoffs with a 23–10 defensive shellacking, and also I think our offense had the ball occasionally too. Hard to tell. Let’s talk about it, because I definitely haven’t been doing that to anyone who will listen for 24 hours already.

Max Brosmer is exactly who we thought he was (and we still beat the Lions ahahahahahaha)

Okay, average net passing yards for a game-winning NFL team is somewhere between 220 and 240, depending on what source you’re looking at. In front of an electric Christmas Day crowd, your Vikings let that hype channel through their veins to put up three net passing yards. That’s the lowest total for a winning team since the Texans beat the Raiders with −5 in 2006, and with all the caveats you can offer – that was an incredibly patchwork O-line, for example – most of that statistical nonsensicality rests squarely on the shoulders of the undrafted free agent under center.

Max Brosmer was, as one might expect from a guy who only made the roster because Sam Howell and Brett Rypien forgot what a football was in preseason, pretty bad! A few tidy completions, a few effective scrambles, but for once the box score tells a decent story, because most of the yardage lost on the seven sacks Brosmer took was, regrettably, on him. The former Golden Gopher went down astonishingly quickly under the slightest pressure, and on the occasions where he did find an escape, he scampered about with a gait I spent the entire game trying to adequately describe before settling on “postman scared of dog played at 1.25x speed”. But(!) he didn’t turn the ball over! He handed it off just fine (notably on that GORGEOUS Addison jet sweep TD)! And we won!!! Oh my god, we actually won, ahahahahaha… okay, sorry, column professional writing…

All the Gink/Grinch puns have been taken, sorry

Holy moly, Brian Flores is COOKING. And you know what? I don’t care if it’s not for anything. There’ll be those who complain it’s meaningless with no postseason to play for (and don’t even talk to me about tanking. Loser mentality). I don’t care! It’s fun! Turning over the smuggest team in the division six times is fun! Seeing Dallas Turner reaching his enormous potential is fun, and Jalen Redmond continuing his out-of-nowhere emergence even more so!

And Van Ginkel, man. Van Ginkel might be the most delightful player to watch in football right now. He’s everywhere, involved in everything, and seeing a guy Flores brought over from Miami nailing the brief so well is the kind of thing that gives you hope that these are scheme wins, these are plans coming together… and that might just mean that this is sustainable, that this absolute heater the whole unit is on can carry over to next year and games that matter to everyone (including the weirdos who don’t think beating your rivals on Christmas Day with an absolute clownshoes offensive performance is the coolest thing ever).

Oh yeah, and there’s one more guy on that defense we need to talk about…

Hitman, baby

Call him the Ghost of Christmas Past, cos Harrison Smith rolled back the years last night. A sack, an interception and a lovely pass breakup were among the highlights of a proper stunner from our veteran safety, easily his best of the year. He’s now one pick away from the legendary 40–20 club (40 picks, 20 sacks, and only two members so far), and if he snags it against the Packers next week I will ascend. Even without it, he’s already in legendary status, and if his perennial underrating by the national media keeps him out of the Hall of Fame it’ll be one of the most egregious crimes of the sport (disclaimer: this statement does not cover actual crimes).

And it is, sadly, time to talk like that, because everything – the loss of a step of speed, the switch from coverage towards blitzing, the tears in his eyes during the locker room interview – points towards next week being the conclusion of a truly, sincerely legendary career, every snap of which has come as a Viking. It’s personal for me – Smith’s first year in the league was the first year I really started seriously watching the sport, and I sat watching last night’s game in my 22 whiteout jersey. It’s gonna be emotional if he does hang it up. I’m so, so glad we got to see him go out there and play lights-out one more time. Now PLEASE let him do it to Green Bay next week too.

What does this game tell us about our QB situation going forwards?

Nothing! Have a day off from that. Merry Christmas!

Okay, but did we seriously beat the Lions with 3 net passing yards?

Yep! We did! We won the stupidest game I’ve ever seen and it absolutely ruled. If you’d take a slightly higher draft pick over experiencing that, I do not understand you. If you’re grizzling about the 3rd- and 4th-place schedules, I kinda get it but I also think you’ve missed the point of this. 31 out of 32 teams don’t win the Super Bowl every year, and if you can’t delight in absolutely ridiculous moments like this, you’re not getting what you can from this sport. From any sport. When we drafted JJ McCarthy in 2024, we figured that year would be “just enjoy the ride” and the hope would start to manifest in 2025. They just swapped places. It’s fine. You can enjoy the ride now. It’s very, very silly, and it involves knocking a division rival out of the playoffs. You’re gonna love it.

Wait, why was Seth Rollins there?

I dunno, man, I guess Netflix like overrated wrestlers who are also Bears fans.

Do you want to have your say about an upcoming Vikings game? Is something really grinding your gears? You can have your say right here in Skol from the Sofa. Just drop us an email at UKVikingsFanClub@gmail.com or send us a DM on any of our social media channels.